Tag Archives: director

Creature Feature Interviews

Over the years, I have profiled writers, directors, actors, producers and composers but today, I’m adding a new profession to that list.

I spoke with Kevin O’Neill, one of the best VFX Supervisor in the industry, about his career and the big transition that he went through in becoming a top tier creature feature director for Roger Corman. With directing credits include Dinocroc and the two Sharktopus sequels and VFX credits include Piranha 3D and Crocodile, Kevin has amassed a wealth of experience which he generously took time from his busy schedule to talk to me about.

Read on to discover the day-to-day business of a VFX Supervisor, what it’s really like to work for Roger Corman, what really happened to Sharktopus vs Mermantula and an exclusive scoop on his next project, Intergalactic Shark Attack…

[KO] Well, I grew up on the East End of Long Island during the 60’s/70’s, when the local TV stations and Cinema would run everything from King Kong (1933) to Godzilla to of course, Ray Harryhausen films. I developed and early fascination with Ray H. and Willis O’Brien’s work, and soon found myself immersed in all things related to the process and equipment necessary to produce short experimental films. I was lucky to have taken up this interest at the same time a small but very informative collection of books and magazines dedicated to the technical and art of visual effects films, both professional and amateur were starting to publish on a regular basis.

Creature Feature Interviews

Michael Anderson (The Hatching)

Britain is never the first country that springs to mind when thinking of the Creature Feature market but there is one man who is looking to change that.

Film-maker Michael Anderson has had a long and varied career spanning multiple decades and now, he has turned his hard-earned skills to his feature-length directorial debut, The Hatching.

Co-written by Anderson and his writing partner, Nick Squire, The Hatching was produced entirely in the UK and has already wowed distributors from the US.

In the UK, The Hatching has made plenty of waves on the festival circuit and I managed to catch up with Mr Anderson to discuss everything from the movie to the British sense of humour, shooting a film in the UK, the use of real crocodiles vs CGI and the Winter Floods of 2013.

And if that wasn’t enough, we got some exclusive scoops on some future Creature Feature projects that Mr Anderson has in the works…